Joe Banner

Daily News columnist Elmer Smith spoke with Eagles president Joe Banner last night about the Eagles' signing of Michael Vick. Here is some of what he told Smith: On fan reaction: "We got quite a few calls from people who were upset. But there was a fairly significant, large number, in favor. I'd say there was a smaller number opposed ... "We've been hearing anecdotes of people in sports bars who were enthusiastic about it. There were some chants for Vick here at the game. " On the decision-making process: "I just hope the people will understand that we did our research.

More than two months after it was first reported, Joe Banner was officially named chief executive officer of the Cleveland Browns Tuesday after NFL owners unanimously approved Jimmy Haslam's purchase of the team. "It was a long ride that was actually quite short," Banner told the Inquirer . "It's incredibly exciting. Everybody is wired differently, but this is something I've been looking forward to for some time, something I've wanted to take on. It's the same way I felt when I first came to Philadelphia.

Repress your rage, if you can for a moment, over Eagles ticket prices, $7.50 stadium beers, hoagiegate, Staleygate, the opening-night shutout. Joe Banner, chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Eagles, has a team you can cheer for without mixed feelings. Every school morning, an army of young adults in red "City Year" jackets gather at the foot of City Hall, then disperse to the city's most understaffed public schools. They aid teachers, they clean grounds, they tutor and mentor.

It seemed pretty clear. And now? Well, now it doesn't. The Eagles can thank Joe Banner for that. After the Birds' season ended, Andy Reid held a news conference and was immediately asked what would happen with Donovan McNabb moving forward, whether he would be Reid's quarterback next season or if Reid was thinking about making the switch to the Hog Hunter (more traditionally referred to by his Christian name, Kevin Kolb). Reid normally dodges direct answers the way Asante Samuel avoids physical contact and tackling, but for once he was candid.

Love him or hate him, Joe Banner was one of a kind in the NFL. Perhaps never in the history of the league had someone with so little a football background risen to such prominence. After nearly 20 years with the Eagles, in which he had significant input into football decisions, Banner was hired by the Cleveland Browns as CEO and given the final say he did not have in Philadelphia. But his reign lasted only 16 months. After Banner and the Browns fired their second coach in 12 months and hired Mike Pettine following a protracted search, Banner was relieved of his duties by owner Jimmy Haslam last month.

The shock waves in the sports community suggest that the Eagles cutting Joe Banner loose is a matter of cosmic proportions. "There is a God," was one Philly.com comment. "WE ARE DOOMED!!!" a fan posted on the Eagles message board. "No one in Philly could have envisioned Andy Reid outlasting Joe Banner w/Eagles but it's happened. End of world next," tweeted Tim Panacchio of Comcast SportsNet. The news was broken overnight by The Inquirer's Jeff McLane that Banner was out as team president after 18 years.

Imagine that you've spent two years doing right by the world by devoting your time to charity work. You might see it as good karma when a friend asks you to run his professional football team. Instead, you find, as Eagles executive vice president Joe Banner has, that there is a special place in hell for the managers of Philadelphia sports teams with losing records. Ask him about the past year and he takes a moment to gather his thoughts. "It has been very difficult," he says slowly.

PHOENIX - There has not been a Round 2 of Lurie vs. Banner at the NFL owners meetings. Lifelong friends and business partners for 18 years, Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner exchanged verbal blows in January after the Eagles hired Chip Kelly as coach. During the coaching search, a report on CBSsports.com claimed that a "drunk with power" Howie Roseman had scared away potential candidates, including Kelly, and that other general managers were reluctant to make deals with the Eagles GM. The Eagles believed that Banner was the source behind the report.

With the Eagles preparing to travel to Jacksonville for the Super Bowl, team president Joe Banner spent four hours yesterday at a Philadelphia City Council hearing that explored why dozens of subcontractors who built the team's stadium in 2002 and 2003 still have not been paid in full for their work. During the emotion-filled hearing, Councilman Rick Mariano, who had convened the hearing and issued subpoenas compelling Banner and others to attend, got into an obscenity-laced scuffle with a contractor, Jamal Johnson, who wasn't part of the stadium situation.

It's a vision that has shimmered like a mirage for four years now, sometimes looking so close you could reach out and touch it, sometimes threatening to vanish forever. "I imagine a Monday night game to open the 2003 season," Joe Banner said. "The new stadium is all lit up. There are fireworks. Everyone is excited about it. And then the team takes the field and it's a great team with Donovan [McNabb] in the prime of his career. That image is the one that kept me going through all of this.

INDIANAPOLIS - Andy Reid spoke recently with Howie Roseman, Reid said yesterday, and "Howie's doing good. " Maybe you read that sentence, shrugged your shoulders and said, "eh. " But for the Eagles' information-starved media corps, which has not laid eyes on the former general manager since the Jan. 2 restructuring of the team's front office, this was a gleaming, rare pearl of information. The way most teams operate, yesterday's opening of the NFL Scouting Combine would have been a day to talk to Eagles head coach Chip Kelly about how he sees his role in the draft process, now that Kelly has full personnel control.

It's really an honor and I'm sure all of you shared my excitement when The Inquirer announced last week I had been promoted to Senior Executive Columnist for Sports Content. There's nothing like a new title to make a guy feel important, and I'd also like to congratulate colleagues Bob Brookover, the new Vice President for Sports Columnizing, and Mike Sielski, who steps into the role of Director of Sports Opinion/Columns. There's no doubt in mind that we will work together seamlessly to help the department achieve its goals with the structure now in place.

If when December began, you assured Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie that his team would end its season with a win, he would have been a very happy man. At that time, with the Eagles appearing all but certain of qualifying for the postseason, the only scenario that would fit such an ending would be a win in the Super Bowl. That's not quite how things turned out, however, and after three straight losses that eliminated them from the playoffs, the Eagles did win their last game, a minor-key 34-26 finale against the New York Giants.

Joe Banner woke up Thursday morning in Delray Beach, Fla., where the forecast high was 77 degrees. All things considered, he would have rather been in Cleveland, where the natives had to deal with a record low of 10 degrees Tuesday and nearly 10 inches of snow the week before. Taking the temperature of the former Eagles president who was surprisingly fired as the Browns CEO earlier this year after just 16 months on the job is complicated. For the first season since being hired by his boyhood friend Jeffrey Lurie to help run the Eagles in 1994, Banner is not part of running an NFL franchise.

PAT SHURMUR feels most comfortable when he's uncomfortable. It is no surprise, then, that he smiles even as he squirms when confronted with the million-dollar question: What does he DO, exactly? Shurmur is the offensive coordinator of an offensive system for which he usually gets no credit - neither for its conception, nor its implementation, nor its execution on game day. Will this perception handicap Shurmur the next time he is considered for a head-coaching job? Hardly.

For 18 of Jeffrey Lurie's 20 years as Eagles owner, his childhood friend Joe Banner was a key part of the organization. Banner served in a number of roles, including team president, and was influential in almost every aspect of the Eagles, from stadium construction to coaching hires to player negotiations. Banner left in 2012 to become the CEO of the Cleveland Browns and is no longer in football. Many Eagles employees were hired under Banner's watch, including team president Don Smolenski and general manager Howie Roseman.

IT IS HARD to know what Chip Kelly thinks about his public reputation. He has done so little to cultivate the media that we are a fallow field at this point. We have become so used to the game and its accepted rules - coach comes in; coach whispers an occasional sweet nothing into a couple of ears; coach buys some degree of favor in anticipation of the next whisper, and on and on - that we do not know what to do. The nerve of the guy. So when DeSean Jackson happens, we flail away.

YOU THOUGHT Joe Banner was harsh? Chip Kelly makes Banner look like Mother Teresa. The Eagles sent a clear message when they cut DeSean Jackson yesterday: No matter how well you play, no matter how professionally you act, if we believe you are overpaid we will get rid of you. And we will do anything to protect our image in doing so. Just hours after a story published yesterday on nj.com that tenuously connected Jackson...

The challenge has been a challenge in the NFL for quite some time, and now it's about to become part of Major League Baseball's lexicon, too. When do you challenge? What's worth challenging? Who monitors the replays? Who's to blame when you get it wrong? Having someone other than the game officials involved in making sure a call is right is wrong, but at least baseball is finally embracing a technology that the NFL first welcomed when Madonna was singing about virgins, holidays, and preaching papas.

Love him or hate him, Joe Banner was one of a kind in the NFL. Perhaps never in the history of the league had someone with so little a football background risen to such prominence. After nearly 20 years with the Eagles, in which he had significant input into football decisions, Banner was hired by the Cleveland Browns as CEO and given the final say he did not have in Philadelphia. But his reign lasted only 16 months. After Banner and the Browns fired their second coach in 12 months and hired Mike Pettine following a protracted search, Banner was relieved of his duties by owner Jimmy Haslam last month.